GitHub Auth for Local Git Operations

Private repo status doesn’t block committing — it just requires one of these to already be configured on the machine actually doing the git work.

# SSH key path
git clone git@github.com:user/repo.git
 
# HTTPS + token (prompts for credentials, or use a cached credential helper)
git clone https://github.com/user/repo.git
 
# GitHub CLI — authenticates once, then git/gh both use it
gh auth login

Key distinction

A claude.ai chat session has no filesystem/git access to a local machine at all — auth and commits only happen through something running locally (Claude Code, or you) using whatever git credentials already exist there.

See also

• Repoint and Push a Remote — changing a remote URL and pushing a branch to it.